Straight Man

could be months, he now admits. A year maybe. In the meantime I don’t know how they’re living. It can’t be on Julie’s service manager’s salary at a department store at the Railton Mall. Russell, a computer software specialist, does a little freelancing.
    The house itself is testimony to their sudden reversal of expectation. From the front it’s a dead ringer for our own house, not coincidentally, since they’ve used our contractor, our plans. And it’s true what Lily says. I’m sometimes genuinely slow on the uptake. Seeingtheir house rise out of the ground was an unsettling experience, but it took many weeks for me to tumble to the reason—that our daughter was building our house. Only when I saw the two decks—one front, one back—did the realization come into clear focus. “How’d they get the plans is what I’d love to know,” I told Lily.
    “From me, of course,” my wife said, as if this were one of life’s mysteries that even I should be able to plumb on my own.
    “You gave them our house plans?” I said, life’s essential sense of mystery undiminished.
    “It saved them a lot of money.”
    There were other benefits too, according to my daughter. “Carl,” she explained, in reference to our builder, “says he’s going to get the whole thing right this time. He says he remembers all the little ways he fucked up when he built your place. Ours will be perfect.”
    Mysteries on top of mysteries. How is it that my daughter is on a first-name basis with the same contractor who worked me like one of his own laborers and pocketed my checks without ever encouraging the tiniest intimacy? And when did my younger daughter start using the phrase “fucked up” in my presence? And, most important, why would Julie want a replica (however perfect) of her parents’ house?
    “Does this mean that if I ever tire of living in my own fucked-up house I can come live with you?” I asked. To which my daughter put her hands on her slender hips, a dead ringer for her mother in this posture, truth be told, and said, “Oh, Daddy, you don’t have to get all pissy. You know what I meant.”
    Pissy?
    “Besides,” she said with a grin, “the houses won’t be identical. Ours is going to have a pool and Jacuzzi.”
    It doesn’t though. At least not yet. They’ve put off the construction of these for now. Lily has informed me of this, as if to convince me that there’s nothing to worry about, that Russell and Julie are more sensible than I’ve given them credit for being, the house itself notwithstanding.
    But when I chug up to the mailbox and survey their house, there are signs of desperation that transcend the shrunken mound of earth alongside the half-dug hole. That they’ve run out of money and the bank’s confidence rather precipitously is everywhere evidenced. Thewinding driveway remains unpaved, the lot unlandscaped, the windows unshuttered. A piece of bright blue tarp flaps over the chimney hole like a flag. Their house sends a chill through me, the fear rendered more personal by the resemblance of their house to Lily’s and mine. I have two thoughts in rapid succession, the second coming before I can dispel the first. The first is: My God, they aren’t going to make it. The second thought is that, in some deeper sense, I’m looking not at their house but rather at my own, and this causes me to recall Teddy’s question to my wife as I watched from the kitchen window. Did she think I was going to be all right, was what he’d wanted to know. Or at least I think that was what he was asking.
    A car that I’m aware has been following me up the long hill catches me here at its crest. I trot into my daughter’s drive to let the car pass. But whoever it is has slowed down in what appears to me comic concern for my safety. When whoever stops, blinker blinking, I realize it’s Julie, who toots me out of the way and then waves for me to follow her up the drive. The last thing I want is to visit her and Russell, but I’m stuck, so I do as I’m told. Actually, I’ve run farther than I planned, so maybe resting up before I head back isn’t such a bad idea.
    “You didn’t look like you were going to make that hill,” my daughter says when I trot up. She hands me a small sack of groceries from the trunk and slams it.
    “I’m going to be fifty this summer,” I remind her, panting. “One of these days you’re going to find me alongside the road.”
    Julie usually chides my morbid humor, but